


The Unreliable Narrator

by rainer76



Category: Fringe
Genre: AU, Other, WIP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 22:50:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lincoln's left holding the bag</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unreliable Narrator

**Author's Note:**

> This is an au, a little odd, and requires a little patience. Beta thanks to kernezelda, who hasn't flinched yet when I drop these things on her head.

_Once upon a time, a man stood on the very tip of the ocean. He said: “Olivia Dunham was my wife, she gave me a home, she taught me how to fight.”_

_It was fifteen years into a future that no longer exists and Peter already knew he was lost; that at the center of his heart, he was his father’s son, doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Trying, desperately, to keep Olivia Dunham alive. Any version of her._

_Once upon a time, a girl was precious to the people who loved her before she was ever special, before Olivia Dunham shot into her own power. Strong emotion was the trigger and Nina Sharp the marksman. The betrayal set the house quaking: the world drew tight, dark and unhappy. Her power grew incandescent. Olivia alone, remembers the old timeline, but the memory is a distant mirage to the rage of her current betrayal. The ZFT needed a soldier for a coming war and Olivia is it._

_(She dies)._

_Olivia Dunham saves the world._

***

“Einai kalytero anthropo apo ton patera toy,” Elizabeth says. Tears shine in her eyes, and her fingers shake where she cups her son’s face, blocking his passage to the machine. “Peter, when will it stop? _Peter_!” when he struggles in her grip. “Let her go, son, please, let her _go._ ” She whispers it like a lullaby, a lament: be a better man than your father. The dual worlds expand, beginning to heal. The room starts to tremble as the bridge loses stability. “She did a good thing, Peter, don't take that away from her.”

Lincoln squats beside Olivia’s body, his mind numb, his entire body cued to listen.

He’s waiting for that indrawn breath, the rise and fall of her chest. He cups one hand to her forehead as if to ease a migraine and feels himself turn still. Across the room, Lincoln's double pulls the remaining Olivia close, faced with _finality_ and no longer willing to wait. His grip is white-knuckled as he drags the redhead to the other side, as they vanish into their own reality, and the only thing left is Peter’s grief, Olivia’s body, and a mother who stands fierce. “Come with me,” she pleads, backing away, outlined against the doorway. “You don’t belong here.”

Peter doesn’t answer; his face crumples like wet paper. There's a single spot of red on his shirt where Olivia had clutched at him before she fell, a slow motion collapse, a half-pike as she landed awkwardly.

Peter takes two steps out of his mother’s radius, further from the machine, deeper into the room. His breathing is labored. He meets Lincoln’s eyes without any shame for the tears in his own. “You’ll look after her?”

Lincoln’s throat tightens angrily, _she’s his partner_ , the answer is a given. He nods curtly and drops his hand from Olivia's forehead to her eyes, closing them gently. Once upon a time, they all lived separate lives; in one iteration Olivia loved Peter fiercely; in another, she held out her hand toward Lincoln and pulled him close. Their affection was fragile, their kisses lingering. He thought he would have more time. Olivia’s lips are soft under his touch, her breath still.

Peter doesn’t leave via the bridge.   He walks out the door, into New York’s labyrinthine streets, its carnivals and its alleyways; it’s sea of yellow cars. He vanishes like magic before Olivia’s final gift is revealed.

It takes two weeks before Lincoln’s memories shift, before the immediacy of Olivia’s smile is replaced by the analytical, and solitary, work at Hartford. Lincoln wakes up with the sheets tangled around his legs, with his heartbeat banging in his ribcage. He stares up at the ceiling of his old room and shudders as a year’s worth of memories stamp themselves onto his subconscious. It’s not painless. Each adjustment is a nail driven into his skull.  He lies still until the panic recedes and the rage has him moving, staggering to his feet.

Lincoln pulls his clothes on. He checks the time - 6:02 am - and drives like a madman to Estfield Avenue. He parks outside house twenty-one, with its messy lawn and struggling trees, with its children’s toys strewn across the driveway. He keeps the car engine running, the heater blasting on his knuckles, and stares at the two widely spaced windows facing the street like a sentinel’s eyes.

He doesn’t recognize his reflection in the rear-view mirror.

Lincoln hasn’t shaved since Olivia died. His clothes seem looser on his frame, his hair no longer orderly and plastered down. He sees shades of his double, tighter cheekbones, pared down frame, his body cutting back to the bare essentials. His eyes are sharp, flickering over the house for signs of movement.

Robert steps onto the patio at 8:45. He kisses Julie on the cheek before he removes one clutching child from his thigh. Robert steps into his cheap car with its shitty upholstery, bangs the door closed, and accidently reverses over his son’s tinker-toy.

Lincoln laughs.   It takes a moment before he realizes the sound is strained, cracking at the edges. He laughs until he’s breathless, until his cell phone vibrates in his pocket.

“Lincoln,” Astrid says, desperately. “Broyles already signed the transfer papers, again, they’ll be at the Hartford office by mid-morning. Come home, please. I need you at the lab.”

It takes a two weeks until what Lincoln shared with Olivia loses its vibrancy. His memory of her is filtered through layers of separation, partitioned by another reality; by Hartford, by the analysis team at central instead of fieldwork. He was never partnered with Robert - _Robert never ran into that factory_ \- and everything Peter said when he first ‘arrived’ was true. This is how the timeline, the original timeline, must have looked.

Lincoln sits in the car with the engine running, fists curled around the steering wheel. Grief wash over him like a tsunami, panic and anger feed one into another until everything is unstable, until he’s short of breath and gasping from it. Once upon a time, a boy gave everything in an effort to save a girl’s life. In return, when Olivia knew there was no hope for her - when she knew the truth of the previous existence - she gave Peter his world back.

With grace.

***

“How are you doing?”

Astrid’s eyes are red-rimmed, swollen. She plucks at the sweater in her hands, the movement uncharacteristic. “It’s like the worst case of motion sickness. A ripple effect, Walter says. What did she _do_ , Lincoln, because I don’t understand? I don’t understand how I can have two sets of memories, the old timeline right next to the new. I don’t understand how we _forgot_ him. Lincoln, it’s tearing Walter apart. Olivia…" Her voice breaks off mid-flow, hitches unexpectedly. Astrid’s eyelashes are damp, unnaturally long. Her fingers twist in the fabric of her sweater. "Peter left before the changes even started,” she finishes.

She paces away, staring at the office that used to be a bedroom, and is now an office again.   Lincoln follows her line of sight and sees Walter crashed out on a couch, his body curled inward loosely. Like Astrid, he's grieving the loss of two people. Walter doesn’t sleep much, not at night and rarely in the day. Lincoln suspects medication is at work.

“I don’t even know how to find him,” Astrid confesses.

Lincoln looks away. He rubs a hand across the stubble on his jaw-line and tries to remember what Olivia’s kisses had tasted like. The way she would curl into his body.

“It’s cruel,” he says, unexpectedly.

He doesn’t know if he’s talking about Peter, leaving before anyone remembered him, or if he’s talking to Olivia. Because Lincoln remembers being her partner, and there’s something bleeding raw inside that would prefer not to. He was happy in Hartford.

(He hasn’t been happy in Hartford for over a year).

“Lincoln?” Astrid says. She takes a step forward, concern writ on her expression.

“Why do we remember?” His words are accusing, concise. He motions at Astrid, Walter; he means himself and Broyles, too. “Why do we remember how things used to be and no one else?”

He’s angry. He can feel the aftershocks; the way the water’s turned toxic and choppy with upheaval, waiting for the next wave to hit. Lincoln’s not feeling mild or calm, he wants to punch Peter Bishop in the face.

Astrid tenses, her arms folding across her chest defensively.

He realizes belatedly it must be worse for her. Lincoln’s juggling two sets of memories, together, the dual timelines straddle the border of twelve months. For Astrid and Walter, for Broyles, it's closer to four years. Lincoln eyes Walter and wonders what type of dosage he’s using, if he’s flexible enough to withstand the bend, or if the changes will snap the older man like deadwood.

“She was my best friend in the other timeline,” Astrid says, her words barely audible. “We liked each other here but we weren’t…buddies. We didn’t hang out. You never met Olivia here.” When Lincoln opens his mouth to object, Astrid cuts him off. “You didn’t, Lincoln, not really. But you loved her in the other timeline. I think _I_ want to keep those memories, of being her best friend.”

She looks at him, eye-to-eye, diminutive frame and a mental stature that seems taller. He can see the steel, he can feel it when her tone of voice changes. “And you forget, Peter never asked for any of this to happen. Not once. Not even as a child. Don’t you dare blame him.”

He hasn’t slept, he’s feeling churlish, and Lincoln can blame whomever he damn well pleases.

But the thing is: he remembers Roxbury, he remembers meeting Peter in the rain, the type of weather that was blustery and undecided, half snow, half sleet, all of it miserable and damp. He remembers meeting Peter Bishop _first_ and thinking… Lincoln cuts the thought of abruptly, confused.

Irritated, he tries to order his mind. With the transfer complete he's now senior agent, and he's inherited Fringe, a grief-struck junior agent with years more experience with the abnormal, and a mad scientist. "You're my partner," he says, sounding the thought aloud. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until Astrid nods. "Ask Broyles to reassign Tim to us, too, because we'll need him for babysitting duties."   He's the same Lincoln Lee as before - whose first experience of Fringe was chasing a woman who wouldn't die, who slotted against Peter’s side and worked the case with him, never once feeling out of his comfort zone.

He remembers the easy way Peter had welcomed him back then, and hopes fervently, in a timeline that's fast losing relevance, he had at least returned the favor.

He’s the same Lincoln Lee who gave Peter his phone number, who went to bed with the thought of transfer on his mind. Who thought of Fringe until one morning he woke up, and impossibly, everything had changed.

“You can ask him yourself.”

Astrid jerks her chin, her shoulders straightening as Broyles’ enters the lab. He looks gaunt, the tan coat flapping around his calves when he takes the steps down to their level. “Agent Lee, how are you?”

“I woke up in Hartford,” Lincoln says flatly.

“Then welcome back.” Broyles doesn't miss a beat. His eyes sweep past them both to land on Walter.

“Sir,” Astrid ventures. “Are you alright?”

“I spent the morning at Boston General.” Broyles’ words are clipped, a slump to his shoulders that wasn’t there a month ago. Like Lincoln, he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. “Nina Sharp was admitted early this morning with a psychotic break.”

Twenty-one years of memories, of raising Olivia from childhood, side by side with another reality in which Nina never had. Of all the changes that had occurred, their relationship had been the most drastic.

The weight of those contradictory timelines would be enough to crush any person. _Good,_ Lincoln thinks, vicious and self-satisfied. He knows Broyles is close to Nina, their past an open question mark, but he can’t translate it into concern. _Good, because no one’s getting out of this game scot-free._ Nina least of all.

“How’s Dr. Bishop?”

“I sedated him this morning,” Astrid answers promptly. “He should be--”

“Awake.” They watch quietly as Walter rolls off the couch, creases on the side of his face where he had rested against the leather. His hair is a bird’s nest of steel grey, his complexion leached of color. At Olivia’s funeral, less than a week ago, Walter had swayed on his feet as if a stiff breeze could knock him over. “I always wanted a daughter,” he had started the eulogy. “Olivia was that and much more. She was the type of woman who did not fail, whose compassion…”

Lincoln had stood beside Astrid and let the words wash over him, felt her hand brush his knuckles until he opened his palm to her. It had been 11:15 in the morning under a blue sky and sun. They stood hand-in-hand while Lincoln tried, and failed, not to compare it to Robert’s funeral, only four months earlier.

He lost a partner, gained a lover, had one death swapped over for another. Except Robert _isn’t_ his partner in this old, new, timeline, and Lincoln feels like he’s having a heart attack.

Walter looks up briefly before he shuffles past them. His eyes bore into Phillip’s. “I’m not the only madman in the building today, am I?”

“Will they recede?” Broyles asks succinctly. “The memories of the other timeline? Will they disappear?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what Olivia did.” Walter looks at Lincoln directly, his mouth turning down. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to relieve myself.”

There’s silence for a moment. “I need a truckload of coffee,” Astrid sighs eventually. “Anyone else?”

“Make mine an Irish.” Broyles takes a seat at the table, chair pulled at a forty-five degree angle, his hand resting palm down, stretched toward the chessboard. All the king’s horses, all of his men, are lined up in neat rows of combat, their faces stony and immobile. “Can you handle this?”

“You requested my transfer. You already know the answer.” Lincoln’s voice is sharper than normal. “How many teams have there been?”

“Working the Pattern? Officially, I guess it’s three. The first team didn’t last a year.”

“You survived.”

“I did.”

“I’m sorry about Nina.”

Broyles’ mouth tilts into a mockery of a smile. “No, you’re really not.”

“I’m not.”

Lincoln had been out of practice when he started playing chess against Walter. He’d been decimated in less than six moves, the games’ conclusion inevitable. “Get your game on, boy,” Walter would exult, delighted, and invite another rematch, and another, until Lincoln improved out of self-preservation. Lincoln turns the rook over in his hands, ignores the bishops completely, diverts his eyes away from the queen.

“Do you still need the unit? Our world isn’t about to collapse into a black hole, thanks to Olivia.”

“Science won’t stop. Lee, take a couple of days if you need, Astrid and Walter, too. Two weeks or a month, but there’s a place here for you. You’re a solid agent.”

Gently, Lincoln replaces the piece.

“And if the memories of the other timeline do fade, I’d gamble you’d be the first to experience it.” When Lincoln tilts his head, Broyles elaborates. “You were least affected by Peter’s disappearance, or his re-emergence. I imagine you’ll be the first to recover.”

Hours earlier, a part of Lincoln had wished he could forget the other timeline, the months he spent sleeping beside her. Their morning kisses, their evening touches. His mouth wires shut. It’s odd, Broyles’ words aren’t a comfort after all.

“I prefer to keep working.”

“I thought you might.”

“What can you tell me about Peter Bishop?”

He can’t read Broyles’ expression. His body language doesn’t alter, his eyes track over Lincoln’s face slowly. “The nature of your inquiry?”

“Walter.”

Lincoln doesn’t need to elaborate.

“He has acquaintances, if not friends. His only family is in this room today.” Sitting opposite you, in the kitchen, staggering out of the bathroom, Broyles doesn’t add.

“Will he realize things have changed?”

“He went off the grid two weeks ago. Peter doesn’t strike me as the type of man who researches himself on the internet. Unless he runs into someone who actually _remembers_ him, he might not know.”

“Two weeks, you said?”

“Take a month.” Broyles’ nods his thanks as Astrid returns. Lincoln can smell the whiskey over the caffeine and thinks she reversed the measurements. “Peter ran once before, he’s experienced at it and not easy to find.”

“He’s not hiding though,” Astrid interrupts thoughtfully, and Lincoln wonders how much she overheard. She swapped her own coffee for a Pepsi-max instead. Astrid tucks an errant curl behind her ear and pops the can as she takes a seat. “I’d prefer to keep working, too, if you don’t mind, sir. We can look for Peter on our own time.”

Broyles looks between them, expression rueful.

***

Astrid’s optimism is a complete bust. Peter might not be actively hiding, but he’s operating on the assumption it’s the old amber-verse. “False identity,” Lincoln mutters. “Or maybe he left the country already? Got a job under a different name?”

“Maybe we could take an ad out on a milk cartoon,” Walter adds dejectedly. Astrid rolls her gaze toward him, irritable, and points out a new piece of information on the case they’re supposed to be working.

Lincoln buys a leather compendium, sticks his business cards in the slots, his pens, notepads, work-diary and events calendar. His cell, too, and zippers the entire thing shut. It’s organized, keeps everything together. He doesn’t have Olivia’s perfect recall. It also saves his life, or at least his favorite work pants.

“I’m good with dogs,” he tells Maureen Dolson. Lucy, a four-year-old Jack Russell, tilts her head and sits when instructed; one ear up, one ear down. “See?”

“I’ll be right back,” Maureen promises, and goes upstairs to find the family photos, a possible link to the case they’re working on. Lucy curls her lip. Her bottom rises from the floor by inches; her front legs stiffen, her tail points upward like an exclamation mark.

Lincoln points one finger at her and says sternly. “Sit.” She launches like a flying devil, straight for his shins. Lincoln doubles over, compendium a physical barrier, trying to block her teeth and her snarls with his leather booklet, and hops backward with alacrity.

Astrid, helpfully, pisses herself laughing.

“Did you _point_ at Lucy?” Maureen shrieks accusingly as she runs down the stairs. “Don’t you dare swat my dog with a compendium!”

“Because you’re so good with them,” Astrid gasps, tears running down her cheeks. She’s still laughing when they’re back in the car. It’s the happiest Lincoln’s seen her in weeks.

“How was I to know pointing at Lucy was a biting offense? And Jack Russell’s aren’t dogs, they’re psychotic rats.”

Her smile is bright, eyes dancing with mirth and Lincoln thinks, finally, everything will turn out okay.

In April, Lincoln starts reading Peter’s book, published in 2002. Most of the copies were destroyed after the MIT faculty found out their youngest professor was, in fact, a fraud. Lincoln spends an afternoon talking to the Dean, and comes away with the impression of a young man who had charmed his way into teaching, whose classes were full, whose ideas leapt like wildfire, scattering embers everywhere.

“And the two books he published?”

“Recalled and destroyed the moment we uncovered his science degree could have come from a breakfast cereal box,” the Dean says stiffly. “We went to a lot of effort, Agent Lee, to bury that scandal.”

“You haven’t seen him since?”

“He would have a lot of nerve to show his face on this campus again.”

“I see.”  He was twenty-four, Lincoln thinks, and tries to imagine it. He remembers the way Peter had shook his hand, damp with rain, his grin quicksilver. “You didn’t think he was…young…for the position?”

The Dean looks away, gaze fixed out the window, watching the maple trees in the wind. “He seemed older at the time, carried himself like he was older.” As Lincoln stood up to leave, the Dean offered. “I still have one of his books, if you want it?”

“You’ve read it?”

“Yes.” The Dean hesitates, one corner of his mouth turning crooked as Lincoln looks at him expectantly. “It was full of potential, Agent Lee. That's hard to destroy.”

Lincoln thinks of Olivia, of home violence, experiments, brainwashing and possession. He thinks of altered worlds and altered states and betrayal.

“Yes. It is.”

He reads Peter’s book every night, feels the ghost touch of a hand clasping his shoulder, the grip wide, firm. It feels oddly like solidarity.

In early May, Astrid and Lincoln accompany a local ranger into a secluded national park. They bump, roll, skid, and slide down a dirt track in a 4WD for three hours, find a week old corpse, and then stare at it in dismay when the coroner’s van informs them their vehicle isn’t equipped to handle the road.

“I can put him in the back seat,” the ranger says, doubtfully.

There’s three of them, not including the corpse, and the back is chock full of ropes, climbing equipment, firearms, and survival necessities. “Dibs on the front,” Astrid calls immediately.

Lincoln spends three hours in the back seat with his head out the window, side by side with a week-old corpse. He goes home smelling like rotten flesh. “Did Peter and Olivia have to put up with this shit?”

In mid May, Walter breaks down. “Abraham, what if he’s trying to leave? What if he still thinks...?” _He’s not wanted here_ , Walter doesn’t say. There’s guilt in his eyes, in the way his fingers claw into Lincoln’s arm. “I need you to find my son.” Walter’s more stable than he was in the other timeline, but Olivia’s death, Peter’s disappearance, have taken their toll, left him frail and snappish, his moods seesawing.

Lincoln’s been finding Peter between the pages of a book, in the dense passages of science and chemistry. Occasionally, he’ll see him in the set of a person’s shoulders or the stiff line of a pea coat. He sees Peter in both timelines, and unlike Broyles, Lincoln’s memories haven’t begun to fade.

When Peter’s world first reset, in the other timeline, he had arrived where he should have been all along - the bottom of Reiden Lake. Lincoln turns the idea over in his mind.

“Where were you?”

“Excuse me?”

“The day everything returned to normal, I woke up in Hartford at 6:02 am, where I should have been in this timeline. Where did you wake up?”

“The house. _Our_ house.”

“He freaked out,” Astrid adds gently, one hand resting on Walter’s shoulder. “I was at home when Walter called, and we came to the lab straight away. Everything had changed, right down to the furniture, our memories with it.”

Nina was at home; Broyles was at home. Both ended up at the hospital in short time. Olivia was dead in every possible timeline, as the Observers had predicted, her location unchanged.

“Where was Peter?”

He should have been with Walter, inside the house, everybody ended up exactly where they were meant to be, where they would have been except…

“He was at her graveside.”

Lincoln turns around slowly.

Astrid straightens, her eyes dark, and says firmly. “It’s where Peter would have been.”

***

One week later, a six-foot-two wharfie punches Astrid in the face. It’s a left hook. The blow catches her on the cusp of the earlobe, the hinge of her jaw. It sends her sprawling like a rag-doll and Lincoln’s world goes white-hot. He breaks his knuckles open, hands wet, splattered with blood. He goes to town on the suspect until he’s bodily pulled off, chest heaving, his teeth bared.

Astrid stares, wide-eyed, from eight feet away.

Her cheek’s already discolored, one palm to the side of her face as she leans against the panel of a van. Unlike Lincoln, her gun’s drawn, pointed low and at an angle, covering their suspect. “Lincoln,” she says, and there’s something both concerned and unimpressed in her tone. “Lincoln,” she repeats softly.  Later, she will wash his hands under the nearest tap, her movements careful, her face troubled.

He goes to his haunt the same night, pushed into the last booth of the all-night diner with the cracked vinyl and cheap cutlery. Located only two blocks from Olivia’s residence. It’s out of his way and Olivia must have known it, but she never commented on his presence there. He takes case-files, wears glasses instead of contacts and listens to the whispered domestic occuring in the mid-row. The flapping of a newspaper as its pages are turned systematically. He jots down notes until Lincoln realizes he’s not working the case but trying to record details, conversations they shared, the exact shade of Olivia’s smile, the way she would dimple. The way she would watch Peter when his attention was elsewhere. How Peter encouraged their relationship, pushing Lincoln forward as if he welcomed the barrier.

Lincoln can’t think of one without considering the other and it seems muddled, the three of them blurring together like city lights in fast motion. The door rings shrilly as it’s pushed open and Lincoln lurches. Athletic build, tall, but the blonde hair is cut into a bob and Lincoln’s coffee, half-forgotten by his side, has turned bitter, cold. It takes him two hours before he realizes he doesn’t want to be here and packs everything up again, stuffing his notes into a satchel and ignoring the sting of his knuckles.

Walter, Astrid and himself investigate a rare bio-disease. They uncover a month-old corpse in a full bathtub, the water turned dishwater grey. The rookie police officer, in an attempt to be helpful, pulls the plug before the coroner’s team arrives. Lincoln watches, expressionless, as three layers of skin gurgle down the drainpipe, peeled off the bone by the waters gentle suction. The policeman turns a one-eighty and retches violently on the tiled floor. “I think I’m building up a tolerance,” Lincoln decides, conversationally. Astrid pats his shoulder in commiseration.

“Working with Walter will do that for you,” she agrees.

“Although not so much for incompetence,” he adds darkly.

The cop, already waxen pale, flinches and takes an unsteady step backwards.

Eventually he ditches the All Night Owl for O’Reilley’s Irish Pub, someplace Lincoln’s never been, and exchanges coffee for three fingers of whiskey. He lets his eyes drift over the clientele, the pretty girls and the rough-faced men, the office-workers, and those who are uninterested in people, their gazes fixed on the TV screen instead.  He considers an older gent with steel grey hair, body trim, leaning toward Lincoln with invitation. It would be quick, nameless, and Lincoln’s not above being used.

Or using others.

He looks like the type of man who would get off on a wide-eyed boy with cocksucker lips. Lincoln’s neither a boy nor wide-eyed but he knows how to play the angles, to burn off the excess hours until he can sleep. It’s not a bad option. Wall-street wannabe has a gym body, manicured nails, and Lincoln imagines his hands would be gentle as he cupped Lincoln’s chin, as he hollowed his cheeks and sucked; let his tongue push against velvet skin and swallow hotly.

Lincoln’s almost out of his seat when he hears, on the periphery of his audio range. “You’re going for Richard Gere? Does that make you Pretty Woman or the small-town girl trying to get knocked up?”

Lincoln freezes halfway, and answers without turning his head around. “I sincerely hope Astrid kicks your butt from one end of the lab to the other.”

“And Olivia said you were the nice boy,” Peter says, not so nicely.


End file.
